Onit Contract Administration and Contract Review & Approval

Pros

Provides an app-style, build-it approach to expertly tailor to the customer's exact needs.
Provides a system that generally requires no user training.

Cons

System requires a lot of customization.

Bottom Line

Onit's Contract Administration and Contract Review & Approval apps, amounts to a platform on which customers can build their own contract processing apps and workflows.

28 Jun 2019

Onit Contract Management begins at $3,000 per month and is less of a standalone solution than one piece of a much larger Onit application ecosystem that covers not only contract management, but also business process management (BPM), sales, human resources (HR), compliance, IT, and more. Customers work within this framework via the Onit App Builder, which essentially lets customers build customizable workflows across whatever business processes they want. This is a very powerful concept if customers embrace the whole platform. For just contract management, however, it's somewhat more complex than most of the competition and definitely more expensive, which is what keeps it behind our Editors' Choice winners in this category, Agiloft and Updraft. However, if you're looking for a flexible platform with comprehensive reporting that can deftly manage contracts and has more than enough room to expand throughout your organization, then Onit is up to the task.

Pricing and Integrations

Onit's contract management solution pricing starts at $3,000 per month, but the company said pricing depends entirely on the configuration. Onit's pricing can fluctuate based on the workflow complexity and other factors. But the solution is priced by using a subscription model with no user limits or licenses. Subscription fees include software maintenance, support, and upgrades.

Onit's integrations are offered on a custom basis as well, but the platform supports a standard methodology for developing and delivering integration points depending on client specifications. Onit's standard interfaces consist of SFTP/FTP and HTTPS as well as SOAP and REST application programming interface (API)–level integrations. Onit integrates with DocuSign, Adobe Sign, and Hello Sign for eSignature functionality.

Depending on client requirements, Onit stated that the company has built SOAP integrations for platforms including IBM Emptoris and OpenText, REST integrations with Google APIs, and file-based integrations with protocols and services ranging from Active Directory (AD) and SharePoint to SAP, Workday, and a SQL-level integration with Tableau, among other services. Onit also supports security protocols including SAML 2.0 single-sign on (SSO) and OAuth 2.0 authentication.

Manging the Contract Lifecycle

Onit uses a customer-based app approach, using the Onit App Builder to customize an organization's experience around corporate and departmental needs. The default Contract Administration and Contract Review & Approval dashboard hasn't changed much since our initial review, putting a timeline-based linear calendar of contract activity up top to track the state of contracts in the system.

The default layout of the Onit interface is gray and Microsoft Excel-like, but the main dashboard pops with color along the chronological timeline view. The interactive report widgets below shows quick at-a-glance counter widgets with contract expiration and approval numbers, and breakdowns of contract types, value, and the number of contracts in each phase of the life cycle in pie, bar, and line graphs. Rather than putting the reporting and analytics data in a separate tab, as with Agiloft and Concord, Onit centralizes reporting data as the first thing you see when you log in. This prevents you from having to tediously comb through databases or email chains for the data you need. While there aren't quite as many reporting customization options as Agiloft or department-specific ROI metrics as found in Coupa Contract Lifecycle Management, the interactive reports are well-designed and the drag-and-drop dashboard widgets and fields are completely customizable.

The left-hand navigation menu includes a more in-depth report page as well. This is where you can create ad hoc reports filtered by groups, phase, contract type, etc. These can be saved as what Onit refers to as saved "Views," available from the menu and sent out as weekly reports or on a custom timeframe or exported as Microsoft Excel files. Views can also be set up at a departmental and a personal level, so a General Counsel's dashboard metrics and views would differ from an executive's, for example.

To start the actual contract intake process, you simply press the large plus (+) button on the top right-hand side of the interface next to the search bar. From here, you see a customizable list of options based on the types of contracts and requests handled by your department. I had the option to submit a new legal services request, a new contract review, a contract administration form, a standard non-disclosure agreement (NDA), or a confidential disclosure agreement (CDA).

The form you see is entirely customizable, but can be standardized as a basic template for different types of contracts. To enter a new contract review and approval form, I entered a contract name and date, the department with which it was associated, along with contract type, amount, expiration, and notes. I then had the option to enter information for other parties associated with the document and upload the actual contract file. Onit doesn't do contract authoring within the platform; it's laser-focused on the contract life cycle pipeline, starting with a contract request and moving chronologically through business approval, legal and finance review, signing, and execution.

The most dynamic part of this process is collaboration and negotiation, enabled by all of the built-in functionality present within every contract file. New contracts and requests are added to the main Contract Repository, accessible from the left-hand menu. Both the reports menu and the contract repository can be configured with unlimited custom views. For instance, you can drill down to contracts from a specific vendor or third party, by contract type or department, or even via a more complex view such as "All NDAs in Legal."

When you click into a contract, you see the approval pipeline up top, with icons showing at what stage of the process each contract currently resides. On the left, you can tab through basic contract details along with life cycle metrics, including how long a contract has been waiting for business approval, legal review or finance review, whether a contract is out for signature, etc. Next to that is a built-in collaboration module with the ability to post comments, links, and attachments as a contract is negotiated. Another nifty feature is a unique email address automatically generated for each contract, which can be used for any correspondence and negotiation happening regarding the contract that's outside the Onit system.

Most importantly, there's an option panel on the right-hand side of each contract page that lets you update a contract's current life cycle status (automatically reflected in the top timeline view), and options to enter contract negotiations with specific users natively within the contract file. Onit also gives you the dynamic ability to assign tasks within this environment and associate contracts and tasks with larger projects. The panel also gives you options to add new participants, add notes as a contract is being negotiated, and view the full audit trail history of user actions, contract edits and negotiations, phase changes, emails sent, and more.

Only Concord provided this level of built-in collaboration, auditability, and task management of the platforms we tested during this round, and not with the level of native phase change and negotiation features found in Onit. This interface creates a neutral portal for representatives to discuss agreements, share redline changes, and update phases until an executable agreement is ready for signature. ContractWorks gives you a similar top-down view of tracking a contract document's life cycle, but without the added collaboration and negotiation component that Onit provides to resolve the entire workflow within a shared portal.

Finally, when a contract is ready for signing and the phase is updated to "Ready for Signature," Onit lets you drag and drop signature fields into the document—synced with DocuSign, Adobe Sign, or Hello Sign—and send the contract out to the eSignature providers. You can set up an automated contract approval workflow that routes a contract from one party to another for signing. And, once the contract has been signed through third-party eSignature providers, Onit automatically moves the contract into the "Executed" phase, assigns a date of execution, and drops the signed PDF file into the Executed Contract field. From here, I was able to click into the PDF file and scroll through to see the signed fields at various points throughout the contract.

A Dynamic Contract Execution Platform

Onit doesn't come cheap compared to most of the other products tested in this roundup. But it has the best native contract life cycle collaboration, negotiation, and management features, with granular control into the end-to-end workflow. Editors' Choice Agiloft has it beat on customization and reporting, while Concord gives you a simpler user experience with powerful contract authoring capabilities. However, for businesses seeking an enterprise-ready platform that can handle multi-party negotiations and take a contract from request and approval all the way through to signing and execution—and all within a centralized experience—Onit is a contract life cycle manager's dream.

Onit Contract Management

Bottom Line: Onit Contract Management is a full featured and highly customizable contract lifecycle platform that also does well in auditing and analysis. Only its price and lack of authoring tools keep it from an Editors' Choice award.